The Role of Hardships

Applying to College
1

<p>Hello, first post here on CC. I'm just wondering the role hardships play in college admissions and how much they are taken into account when deciding to accept or reject a student. Obviously, one cannot just attribute their faults to hardships and must show their resilience from said hardships. Personally, I have faced a few hardships including:
-my father dying of cardiac arrest when I was 11
-my mother being diagnosed with breast cancer basically right after my freshman year began and receiving harsh radiation and chemotherapy treatment through my sophomore year leaving me basically completely on my own during this time
-this year (my Junior year) my grandmother (a Holocaust survivor and one who I grew very close to) dying.</p>

<p>Personally, I believe that although I definitely was negatively affected by these hardships, I have grown and become more independent than most students. I am not at all doing poorly and trying to attribute doing poorly to hardships. If you would like me to post some other information about myself (GPA, SAT scores, ECs, etc.), I can do that, but I didn't want to turn this into a "Will I get accepted to colleges A, B, C?" thread.</p>

2

<p>I’d like to start by saying I’m deeply sorry for your losses.
From my understanding, hardships do not directly help admission into a college, yet they can help significantly if you elaborate on them in your personal statements. Even then, you have to make sure to extrapolate on your hardships and how they shaped you as a person, rather than on relying on the adcoms pity when reading an emotional sob story.</p>

3

<p>Yes, that is exactly what I was trying to say when saying that I think in some ways I have an advantage over other students because I have had to be basically completely independent in my freshman and sophomore years. This will definitely be a topic I elaborate on in my personal statement(s).</p>